Saturday, 25 October 2008

Chips With Everything

With 'Niddbeck Bridge' not due out again until York next Easter I'm taking a few weeks off from layout detailing and concentrating on locomotives, namely my Farish Drewry 0-6-0' shunter and my Derby type 4 1-Co-Co-1 'Peak'.

The class 44/45/46 'Peak' was first all-new Chinese made Farish diesel, but is not to the latest 'DCC Ready' standard of the 37's, 57's and 42 'Warships'. This means the chassis block halves need modifying to isolate the motor, house the decoder chip and route the decoder wires. This can be done using burrs in a minidrill and hand tools but I opted to do it the quick way in my Proxxon MF-70 mini milling machine. Farish chassis blocks are soft mazak zinc alloy castings and really quick and easy to machine.

The picture below show a chassis block half after machining. The top section has been milled out to house the decoder, a wiring route has been milled along, down and then across, and the area where the motor brush tag previously contacted the casting has been machined away.

The picture below better shows the smaller square area that has been milled away to clear the motor brush contact points.

These bare machined areas have subsequently been touched up with black paint to provide a degree of electrical insulation.

In my next post I'll show you the bogie modifications I'm making before reassembling the model.